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Tornado rips through Baker, damaging homes

The Associated Press
Published 11:42 a.m. MT June 13, 2016

Fritz Goernet, a World War II veteran, stands on what remains of his front porch June 12 and surveys the damage done by a tornado that swept through the town of Baker on Saturday.(Photo: Hannah Potes/Billings Gazette via AP)

BAKER — A tornado tore through a small city in eastern Montana, destroying several buildings and injuring a handful of people.

The storm hit Baker on Saturday evening and severely damaged more than 30 homes. Half a dozen were completely destroyed, Tom Bruha, chief of the Baker Rural Fire Department, told The Billings Gazette.

Baker resident Ruby Goernet said her husband, Fritz Goernet, noticed trees leaning almost completely sideways and warned her to take cover.

“I crawled under the table, and it was a 55-gallon barrel that came flying through one of the windows,” she said.

Fritz Goernet didn’t have time to join her. The storm tore the roof off their trailer house and shattered the windows.

“Just like in a second it was gone, but it sure made a lot of noise when it was here,” Ruby Goernet said.

Their home was a complete loss, but neither of the Goernets was seriously injured. “We went house to house, basically making sure everyone was accounted for,” he said.

Two of Baker’s 45 volunteer firefighters were originally out of town getting married, Bruha said, but they returned to help with the emergency response.

One of the people rescued was a firefighter who was severely injured and taken to Billings for medical treatment.

The American Red Cross responded to the tornado, but it did not need to set up emergency shelter, Bruha said. All displaced people found a place to stay with friends and family or rented motel rooms.

The cleanup could take weeks, Bruha said. Montana-Dakota Utilities Co. was working on repairing broken power lines Sunday. There are also ATVs and trailers in Baker Lake and no plan to remove them yet.

Residents have begun hauling away tree limbs and other debris from the eight-block epicenter using pickups, trailers, dumpsters and wheel barrows.

A severe storm also hit the community of Roy on Friday night. The National Weather Service isn’t prepared to call it a tornado, but it destroyed buildings, ripped apart grain bins and smashed windows.

In Colorado, the National Weather Service issued a tornado warning that is in effect until 9 p.m. for most of eastern Colorado, excluding Denver.